Vinegar Vignettes
by Going Merry
Summary: They eat; they meet. AU, Slice of Life, Short Chapters - a Fairy Tail fanfic lightly flavoured by Shinya Shokudo and The Taste of Curry, the latter being a korean drama special.
1. Ch 0: Introduction

**Vinegar Vignettes**

Introduction

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AU, Slice of Life - in the sense that glimpses into characters' lives will be provided, but not a comprehensive saga-esque narrative. In the view that stories are merely glimpses into a window of a character's life. They enter the story with their own back-stories; we leave them to lead their own lives when we exit the tale. For surely this is essential if we want to believe that these characters could be real - for then they would not die at the mere close of a page.

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A Fairy Tail Fanfiction. This might be to your taste if you like shorter reads.

Lightly flavoured by Shinya Shokudo and The Taste of Curry, the latter being a korean drama special.


	2. Ch 1: The Curtain Rises on Her Early 20s

Ch. 1 - the curtain rises on her early 20s

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 _Sweet. A little sour. Tangy._

Lucy bustled about her little kitchenette, plucking spices and sauces from various shelves and cupboards. On the ledge of the kitchen sink balanced a mixing bowl, where a piece of chicken breast lay steeped in brown sauce.

"Aha!"

Eyes glittering, Lucy raised a small shaker filled with grated lemon flakes to the kitchen light, triumphant. She hopped towards the kitchen sink, and shook a generous amount of lemon flakes into the bowl. They looked like tiny daffodils emerging from a wet, spring field.

Dipping her head towards the chicken, Lucy inhaled deeply and smiled to find that it was just as she wanted it.

She covered the bowl with cooking film and left it perched on the edge of the sink.


	3. Ch 2: Natsu Leaves the Chinese Stall

_Friday night, 8 o'clock, after work._

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 _Splendid. The one day I manage to scoot from work early I leave my wallet in the office._

Natsu groaned. So did his stomach. Further digging in his pockets revealed nothing, and he forced himself to gulp down the lump of longing in his throat as he continued gazing at the spools of steam rising from paying customers' bowls the way kids look at puppies through pet shop windows. Except this time he was the one making the puppy dog eyes.

... Which had absolutely no effect on the stolid shop owner preoccupied with whipping up bowl after bowl of laksa, taking orders without raising his head and settling payments faster than a calculator. It was a new establishment and he wasn't taking any risks, _sorry. D_ _o come back next time though, young man. I'll give you an extra large serving!_

Natsu slumped as he walked away. Man, was he hungry. And maaaan, was there ever a more tantalising smell than that of spicy, creamy laksa at 8pm on a Friday when all he wanted was some spice to sweat out the dust from busying around an office all day, pushing papers and settling cases like a worker bee. He never thought he would grow up to be an office worker, but there he was, 28 years old, sweating through his white office shirt outside the new Chinese stall downtown at the end of a long week with the dark eye circles and unkempt hair to prove it.

He sighed. His stomach grumbled. Together, they made their way gloomily to his car.


	4. Ch 3: Lucy Cooks and Reminisces

_Marinate the chicken overnight._

Lucy cleaned up the kitchenette.

The bowls, plates and utensils were soaped swiftly and surely, with practiced ease, and Lucy lingered for a moment as the tap water gushed warmly over her scrubbing fingers. It was nice, living alone. Since she was sixteen she had dreamt of living by herself - renting a nice apartment overlooking one of Magnolia's winding waterways, not too close to the city centre with its heat and bustle, but communal enough such that the grocer lived two blocks away and you could always count on the cute café barista to give you extra whipped cream on your regular.

She turned off the tap; her fingers were wrinkly and soft now. Wiping off a large gleaming platter with a clean white cloth, her gaze floated around her little kitchenette. She was proud of it; it was cosy and homey, and most importantly, it was _hers_. She remembered picking out the glazed tomato-red wall tiles herself, and every time sunlight streamed in from the little window above the sink and ricocheted around the room they would twinkle at her invitingly. _Come on, Lucy_ , they seemed to beckon _, let's cook something special today!_ and she would be invariably reminded of her mother, who had helped her chop pre-boiled radishes with her plastic baby knife, and conspiratorially sneaked her cookie dough when they baked surprise cookies for her father.

Lucy missed her mother. Before her death she was always bustling around the kitchen and trying out new recipes, sometimes with hilariously disastrous results - like the time she got distracted by their dog Plue the First, and filled the muffins with Vegemite instead of Nutella, or the time she tried to cook lutefisk but left it boiling for too long... what Lucy loved most was how her mother always let her help out, whether it was measuring out teaspoons of seasoning, or snapping lettuce slices.

Cooking alone was fun just like how living alone was fun - she could add soy sauce to spaghetti if she felt like it, or mix oatmeal with Vegemite instead of syrup, just like how she could leave her bra on the bedside table and go to sleep after a long day, or fall asleep on the cool faux-marble floor directly underneath the ceiling fan on a warm weekend without worrying about getting under anyone's feet. But it did get lonely sometimes. She had had to repeatedly assure her overprotective father that she was capable of taking care of herself before he'd let her move out, and she _was_. She had a well-paying, stable job, paid her rent regularly, and went out for neighbourhood gatherings once in a while - at 23, she was the independent lady she had always wanted to be, and she wouldn't trade it for the world.

But there were moments, even when doing things she loved (like cooking, she loved cooking), where she missed the people at her old house terribly. Her father, Jude, who would make exaggerated funny faces as though he had been knocked out by her food, but laughed heartily and ate as much as he could anyway, or their housekeeper Martha, who had taken care of Lucy when she was a baby, of her mother Layla when she was sick, and now made sure the aging Jude didn't get into accidents. Martha would always tsk at the messes Lucy made in their kitchen but would mop the floors beside her anyway.

Lucy made sure to visit them from time to time, when work allowed, bringing a full tupperware of sushi, container of matcha spaghetti or flask of shrimp soup to share. They would have a wonderful time together, and she wouldn't miss them so badly for a while. But her mother... it would soon be a decade since she last saw her mother, and just like how sadness stilled nestled in the lines of her father's smiles whenever she presented some new concoction, cooking would always be a bittersweet activity accompanied by the invisible, gentle presence of her mother. Lucy could almost feel her mother's warm hand, rough from washing too many bowls, guiding her own small, child's one, as they chopped carrots and radishes and poured them into bubbling pots of broth together...

She shook herself out of her thoughts as the last fork was wiped to gleaming perfection and replaced in the cutlery drawer. Lifting the bowl holding the chicken breast from the sink, she yanked the fridge open and settled it on the topmost layer. Underneath the little light illuminating the contents of the fridge, the yellow lemon flakes dotting the chicken's skin winked, as bittersweet as memories are apt to be.

Closing the fridge doors, Lucy trundled off to sleep.


End file.
